[animix]

Originally Posted by Sherman90

Hi everyone,

Posting this under the mother-thread per another member's advisement.

While waiting for a local music store to get back to me an offer I made on an n12, I walked into another shoppe and spotted a used Mackie Onyx 1620. I'd never heard of this unit before.

I'm an admitted, absolute neophyte when it comes to recording. I wanted the n12 because it seems like the ideal piece of kit to dive into the field and to start recording my solo work and the live improvisatory jam sessions of an experimental punk band I'm in. The n12 purportedly also sports some exceptional preamps, built in reverb, integration with Cubase, and overall high quality.

Buying the add-on Firewire interface for the Mackie aside, would somebody kindly explain to me the real, practical, hard-world differences between the n12 and the 1620/40 series? I still get the impression that the n12 is the "superior" unit (for my needs), but there are some things I just can't understand owing to my lack of experience/knowledge. For example, the 1620 has some extra AUX outputs that the n12 doesn't? What are these good for, exactly? The 1620 also records by "bypassing" the EQ, whereas the n12 doesn't?

Would anybody care to parse out the differences here? I'd be very grateful.

Cheers!

The N12 interfaces with Steinberg software in a way that the Mackie does not. If you're not using Steinberg Cubase or Nuendo, I would see no real advantage to the N12 over the Mackie board, except maybe the preamps and EQ section.